52 pages • 1 hour read
Ruth WareThe Death of Mrs. Westaway
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Trepassen House
Trepassen House has been the Westaway family home for generations, bought and expanded by the wealth allotted over many years. When Hal first researches the estate, she considers it symbolic of the kind of money she lacks. Her own cramped apartment is impoverished by comparison, and the simple thought of such a lavish property as Trepassen House inspires her envy. Hal cannot even imagine a life of such wealth and, glimpsing the property from afar, she is reminded of her own poverty.
When she arrives at Trepassen House, Hal learns that appearances can be deceiving. While the house seems glamorous from afar, the reality is very different. The house is rundown, windows are smashed, the grounds are unkempt, and entire rooms are coated in a thick layer of dust. The house changes to a symbol of the Westaways’ decline. Though the family may appear happy and successful from the outside, they are each traumatized by the many dark secrets in their past. Like the family itself, the once-lavish house has frayed at the edges and fallen into disrepair.
Hal ultimately inherits the Westaway family fortune, and the house newly symbolizes the inheritance, both the good and the bad; the house will allow Hal to escape her financial woes, but it is also a symbol of her traumatic family history. Her biological mother was tortured, murdered, and her body hidden on the grounds, while Hal nearly suffered the same fate. However, the house also symbolizes the support the family now provides her. Hal began the novel in loneliness but discovers that she has a loving (if flawed) family.
Tarot Cards
Tarot cards are a specialized deck of cards, each with a unique image. The cards can be drawn by a trained reader and used as a form of fortune telling. Hal believes that the cards themselves contain no magic powers but can be used to help a person gather their thoughts and gain insight into themselves. Historically, tarot cards are inherently infused with symbolism, but they are given new meanings by the novel. The practice of reading tarot cards is passed from Maggie to Maud and then to Hal as a legacy from one loved one to another. Each Maggie, Maud, and Hal use tarot to provide income at difficult points in their lives, and the tarot deck thus symbolizes support from loved ones.
The cards’ interpretation through cold reading symbolizes Hal’s insight into others, whether they have come to her booth or are confessing to a crime. Each card displays an image, and Hal must interpret the image in relation to the person. This talent distinguishes Hal, as she knows how to be vague enough to infuse a broad statement with meaning, as well as how to discern almost imperceptible behaviors indicating whether a person is telling the truth. She then appropriates these skills to infiltrate the Westaway family and, later, to extract a murder confession from Ezra.
The tarot cards also symbolize a key theme—the battle between fate and agency. Hal tells her customers that the cards do not predict the future, but rather describe one possible future that the person can now change. The cards further symbolize the difference between awareness of one’s fate and enslavement by it. For example, Hal knows that she follows in the footsteps of her dead mother when she flees to the boathouse, but she knows this cycle does not constrain her. Both the cards and Hal’s actions show that a person can prevent any single concept of the future from dictating the course of their lives.
Magpies
Trepassen House is famously home to many black and white birds that gather in the trees, make a cacophony, and flutter around the garden while the characters count them. When Hal first arrives, the magpies are an omen. Their aggressive sounds and quantity are strange to her, a sentiment echoed in Maggie’s diary entries when she first arrives at the family home. The foreboding creatures scare people and constantly find new ways to bother the home’s inhabitants. As such, they symbolize the household miseries and dark Westaway past.
Hal has a tattoo of a magpie on her shoulder, which she claims is a tribute to her mother, Maggie, whose name she associates with the birds. Hal’s tattoo thus symbolizes her misunderstanding; she considered her mother’s link with magpies to be based on her name or her own preferences, rather than the magpies of Trepassen House. In fact, Hal initially dismisses any link between her mother and Trepassen House as a coincidence. When the truth emerges, however, Hal realizes that she has long been bound to Trepassen House. Like the tattoo, the history of the estate is permanently etched into her. Though she only comes to learn the truth slowly, Hal’s tattoo shows that the connections between reality and fiction are often more than skin deep.
The magpies’ symbolism also appears in the nursery rhyme. As Hal recalls, the rhyme associates the number of magpies with meaning:
One for sorrow
Two for joy
Three for a girl
Four for a boy
Five for silver
Six for gold
Seven for a secret
Never to be told (241-42).
These meanings, like the tarot cards, provide a mantra that can focus a person’s thoughts and allow them to reflect on their circumstances. The final line is the most important, as Trepassen House is filled with many untold secrets. The sheer number of magpies on the grounds symbolizes the sheer number of dark secrets hidden inside the building, and the rhyme is a reminder that even something as innocent as a nursery rhyme can contain a grim element of truth.
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By Ruth Ware
